“Your friend seems nice,” Paul said.
“He is.”
“It’s thoughtful of him to come.”
“Yes. Paul, do I really have a half sister?” I asked.
“Had,” Paul said. “She’s dead.”
His voice sounded cold and flat as he said the words. Almost angry. Was he angry with me for bringing it up? Or was he angry about something else?
“I never told you about the will—”
The door opened, and a middle-aged woman in scrubs entered the room. She reached out and shook hands with us, introducing herself as Dr. Something-or-other. I didn’t catch her name. I didn’t care what it was.
She didn’t beat around the bush.
“Ronald is stable now,” she said. “We’re moving him to a bed in intensive care for a while, probably the next twenty-four hours or so. After that, we’ll move him to a regular room and continue to monitor him there.”
“He’s alive?” I asked, my voice sounding like a child’s in the small, cramped room. A child pleading with an authority figure. Please tell me my brother is alive.
“He is,” the doctor said. “Very much so. Like I said, we’ll watch him and make sure there isn’t any long-term damage. It doesn’t look like the dose he took was that high, so there’s reason for optimism.”
“How did this happen, Doctor?” Paul asked. “He has Down syndrome, and he’s been in Dover Community.”
“They’ll be figuring that out over there in the coming days, I’m sure,” the doctor said. “But my guess would be he’s been holding pills back and not swallowing them. Maybe everything they give him. Your brother takes a variety of medications, which is not unusual for Down syndrome. He could create a pretty good cocktail over there. But like I said, thankfully not enough to do the job he wanted to do.” She stood up. “You’ll be able to go up and see him in about an hour if you want to go home or get something to eat. Someone will let you know when it’s time.”
She nodded at us and left the room.
I felt relief. A small measure, but it was there. I also felt something else. I turned to Paul and said, “I think I’m hungry.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Dan was still there when we came back into the waiting room. He looked at us expectantly, and I suspect he could tell simply by the looks on our faces that we hadn’t received terrible news.
“He’s okay,” I said to him. “I mean, as okay as he can be, considering.”
“Good,” Dan said.
“We’re going to get to see him in ICU soon. They’re moving him up there now.”
“Good,” Dan said again.
Paul said, “We were going to go get something to eat, if you’d like to join us.”
“He can’t,” I said.
Both Dan and Paul looked at me. I sounded edgy and firm, like someone giving commands to a small dog. I could read the look on Dan’s face. He seemed a little hurt. I knew he thought all the progress we had made—my needing him—had evaporated with one sentence barked out by me.
“Can you excuse us just a moment, Paul?” I said.
He nodded and walked away, heading to the cafeteria.
I turned back to Dan. “Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “But I need to talk to my uncle. Alone.”
He still looked hurt, but he put on a brave face for me. “I understand.”
“It’s about that person I was talking to today,” I said. “And a bunch of other things.”
“Okay,” he said. “Family stuff. You know, someday we are going to have to talk about all of this… and you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on.” He paused. “If we’re going to be in any kind of relationship.”
“I will,” I said. “I wish I could tell you all about it today. Right now. But I just can’t. I have to get some other answers first. Believe me, I’d rather be with you than doing any of this.”
He nodded. “Call me when you can.”
I leaned up and kissed him. Right in front of everyone.
“Later,” I said. “I promise.”
I selected a lot of food as we went through the St. Vincent’s cafeteria line. I took a plate of roast beef and gravy with a side of mashed potatoes—and more gravy. I also grabbed a piece of chocolate pie. I hadn’t eaten all day, and it was well past lunch. I didn’t even care that the pie looked like it had been sitting on the cafeteria line since the Reagan administration.
Paul was more controlled. He picked a salad and a turkey sandwich. When we reached the cash register, he paid. I made a token offer to pick up the tab, but he refused. I doubted I had more than a few dollars in my wallet.
We found a table out of the way. The cafeteria wasn’t very crowded on a Saturday. People in Dover seemed to be falling ill and having accidents mostly during normal business hours. I dug into my food as soon as we sat down. And I started with the questions right away.
“So, it’s all true?” I asked. “What this guy told me?”
“I don’t know everything he told you,” Paul said. He picked at his salad with a plastic fork.
“I’ll give you the gist,” I said. “Mom was married to that guy—and not just for a short amount of time. They had a daughter. Oh, and her name is Elizabeth, same as mine. That’s not creepy at all, Paul. Not at all. And on top of that, this daughter, this other Elizabeth—my namesake apparently—ran off and was murdered, possibly by a serial killer. And Mom never told me about it. Neither Mom nor Dad—or you—ever told me about it.”
Paul looked as though he didn’t know what to say. He concentrated on his food, his head drooping a bit between his shoulders. My little rant had brought something home to me, something I hadn’t fully comprehended before. This was no longer just about Mom. Sure, she had kept things from me. But so had Dad—and I thought he and I had understood each other in ways Mom and I didn’t. And Paul. He was supposed to be the cool one, the favorite uncle.
Why didn’t anyone tell me?
“For the record,” Paul finally said, “I think your mother should have told you. I encouraged her to.”
“Why didn’t she?”
He laid the plastic fork aside. “Honestly, I think she was embarrassed. You know what she was like. Private, closed off. Strong. She didn’t admit weakness very well, and here she would have had to tell someone very important to her, someone whose opinion she valued, that she had made a horrible mistake in marrying Gordon Baxter. But she had her reasons for doing it.”
Paul’s response seemed to miss the point. I mostly wanted to understand why I had never been told about having a sister who’d been murdered. Paul seemed more concerned with Mom’s marriage.
“Why was marrying him a horrible mistake?” I asked.
“You met him,” Paul said. “What did you think of him?”
I summoned a mental picture of Gordon Baxter. An odd man, that was for sure. Yes, a little creepy. I couldn’t imagine my mother marrying or spending time with someone like that, but then I couldn’t imagine my mother spending time with any man. I knew she and my father loved each other, but their marriage sometimes looked like a relationship between platonic roommates.
“I think I’m missing something,” I said, taking another couple of bites of my food.
“He’s a criminal, Elizabeth,” Paul said.
“What do you mean?” I chewed, trying to concentrate on what Paul was saying.